Chapter Text
Johanna Mason fucking hated the beds at Thirteen. She’s always hated awful, shitty, terribly made beds but this place took the goddamn prize.
The cot was thin and unyielding, plastic based and didn’t know the meaning of heat retaining. Worthless piece of non flammable crap.
In fairness, it wasn’t all the beds fault for Johanna’s shitty sleep and even shittier moods the next day. She and Katniss also took turns waking up screaming in the night, too.
They didn’t comfort each other. They didn’t do very much at all really. Just breathing heavily and trying to keep quiet in their sudden consciousness, but that doesn’t erase the way your throat squeezes and spasms after crying uncontrollably into wakefulness. The panic and sweat clinging to your body in the neon disturbed dark. At least they didn’t talk about it so thank fuck.
With everything else going on, Johanna was surprised to realize that even after all these years, she really missed home. Her real home, her family. Her childhood. Her parents were never.. kind people. She knew well enough to not sugarcoat the memories that way, but at least they had a nice bed. A large one, so big, that winters had the four of them squished into the kitchen, with the pot belly stove snickering all night and the whole family snoring and warm. Yeah, her mom would fart in her sleep and she’d wake up with her brothers toes in her hair. But a swift crack at the nuts some random time the next day and an entire night of blissful, wonderful slumber made it all worth it.
The only bad thing about not talking to your roommate about all the fucking trauma suffocating your shared room was that when Katniss started sleeping better through the nights, Johanna got angry. Angry was a safe emotion. Safest, maybe. Words like frustration and jealously didn't register well in her brain and she refused to even consider the word guilty. From the anger and silence built resentment. Nights were longer, lonelier.
Johanna was tired. She was fucking tired and uncomfortable. No matter how she positioned herself, it felt like she was laying on her bones wrong, screwing up her joints and bends. No meat or fat to pad the utilitarian mattress. Even her pillow just managed to press the short, sharp hairs, growing on her head back into her scalp.
This place is fucking miserable.
She thought Katniss was asleep then. Her breathing was so deep and quiet. Johanna wished it was shallow and frightened just so it wasn’t just another night of the all encompassing drone that seemed so common in this haunted District. The buzzing, a mocking and incessant noise. It’d murmur all night long until Johanna’s eyes burned in the dark and her muscles grew into stiff and sluggish things. She turned into her pillow, the stupid thing about as comfy as a folded pair of cargo pants, and screamed.
Angry.
Angry until strong.
Angry until weak.
Angry until exhausted.
“Have you walked in the forest yet ?”
Embarrassment crawled like hot pinpoints up her neck and jaw. “What ?” Waspish. Don’t talk to me.
“Me and Gale, we go up sometimes. Propos let us. You wouldn’t know it being down here but we’re underneath a forest.”
Johanna searched the dark wildly, her whole body tense and still. What the fuck was she talking about ? “No shit, idiot. The place is probably overgrown after the bombings.”
It was quiet again. A bullied thing that Johanna was content to leave as it is.
“It reminds me of home.”
There was a different kind of quiet the rest of the night.